With the recent disapproval of the endless "Tomb Raider" series,
it might not sound like a very good idea to release a Tomb Raider
clone. Of course that never deters any game developers from
going ahead and doing so anyway. Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 is, as
you might have guessed, a Tomb Raider clone. Of course, you
have all already glanced at the percentage mark at the top of the
page, and most of you might then have bothered reading up till
here even, so I will now go through why this isn't that bad a game.
Just a note, I have no idea what the Heavy Metal comic book is,
which is what this game is based on, therefore I can't draw any
similarities.

It starts out with an incredibly lame story about some woman who
killed a big evil guy, blah, blah, blah, backed up by a very useless
in-game scene of rocks floating in space. If anything is going to put
you off, it will probably be this intro. The developers probably
considered that and hoped that the main menu's half-naked woman
might keep you interested long enough to skip past the lousy intro
and start playing, where you will then be occupied through the
next few boring minutes by the bouncing breasts of our heroine,
and the fact her ass takes a few seconds to catch up with the rest
of her body while turning.

I'm starting off rather negative here, but that's because being
critical is much more fun that saying how good a game is, so to
balance up my criticism a bit, once in the game you will notice
that the graphics are actually quite nice. In fact the graphics
through most of the game tend to be quite detailed and colorful,
though the engine does have its problems. For one thing, while
the engine seems to be able to do transparencies fine, as the
water in the towns show, in all caverny bits (there's quite a few of
them), the developers seemingly decided, 'who needs
transparencies?' All water in such areas is simply a blue texture
where you wade through, no rippling, no see through, nothing.
Another letdown of the engine, or the graphics artists, is the fact
that it doesn't seem any good at deforming meshes. Like when a
big bad guy gets "squished" he simply blinks out of existence, very
unsatisfying stuff. One last note about the engine is the fact that,
although people's expressions and all are very nicely done, in that
they have distinct faces, all quite detailed, they never quite seem
to *work*. Half the time the characters seem to be looking just over
each other's shoulder as they talk, or sometimes just in the plain
wrong direction. Other times they might be looking at each other,
but it looks so wrong because they have absolutely no
expressions, simply blank stares leveled at each other while they
chatter. Despite these letdowns though, the graphics engine is
adequate enough and it is far more colorful than your average
Tomb Raider engine.

The beginning of the game sees you fighting loads of extremely
irritating flies, that is, giant radioactive green flies, *cough*. Yes,
it's a bit corny, I know. Of course, you also have to defeat
the..*sigh*..giant radioactive green mother fly. Well, past that it
does actually get a bit better; you fight weird giant spiked demon
things and then green gun toting things with two-meter long spines.
There are some hilarious priest robot type things going around
converting people to aliens. Must be from the comic book, because
it felt really out of place in this game, which seems to really be
trying to take itself seriously (which is what makes it a bit boring
too). It's a good comical touch though I guess.

The assortment of weapons is well done and there are far more
weapons than most other games. There are a variety of swords,
axes, pistols, Uzi's, shotguns, explosives, crossbows, slingshots,
and piles more weapons. Also, every now and again, your character
wears different clothes. Every time she
changes, she seems to be more scantily clad than before, perhaps
rewarding the player for completing a difficult section of the game.

While the game might not sound too good with all the criticism I
have spouted out this review, it's all still quite a bit of good fun
most of the time. Finding better weapons and skimpier clothing is
all rewarding enough to keep going, and hacking up big bad guys
with even bigger weapons is entertaining. This title has nothing
really special to offer, but it's different enough to be good, and of
course it's better than your latest installment of Tomb Raider.